1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital camera that identifies a feature of a person and implements a focus and exposure actions responsive to a result of its identification.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, it has been known so far that many technologies which identify a person from image data including a system in which a person is verified by checking it against the fingerprint or iris registered in advance. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application H9-251534 describes in detail an identification method in which an eye, nose and mouth etc are registered as a feature by extracting the eye, nose and mouth etc and then, identity is verified by comparing the registered feature with a feature extracted from input image data and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application H10-232934 discloses a way of enhancing an accuracy of an image database dictionary when registering such the extracted feature. Some of examples in which these technologies have been applied to a camera will be given hereunder.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2001-201779 discloses a camera in which a camera user was registered beforehand as reference information, and a camera can be put into action only when identification information input by photographing the camera user with a camera pointing at its face meets the registered reference information. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2001-309225 disclosed a camera in which data such as a face coordinate, face dimension, a position of an eye, a pause of a head and the like recognized by a face recognition algorithm is stored on an image memory along with image data. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2001-326841 also discloses an imaging apparatus (a digital camera) that stores identification information (face, fingerprint and palm print) to identify an authentic user beforehand. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2002-232761 also discloses an image storage apparatus that stores a photographed image by linking the photographed image to previously read identification information about a subject. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2002-333652 discloses an imaging apparatus that compares previously stored profile information with photographed face information and generates a storage signal. This profile information is stored together with a priority order.